Yes, this is a knitting blog but it would be mean not to share this idea with you. And yes, these curtain will save money but don’t miss the two important health links at the end of the post.
My husband and I are serial house renovators. Not flippers. We tend to move every few years for work and always buy the house that has ‘potential’. You know, the one where you question the sanity of the previous owners. Our first house was 250+ years old and part of Fort Stamford in Connecticut. No ghosts but lots of ancient plumbing, plaster & lath walls and wallpaper … layers and layers of wallpaper.
The biggest difference in the design of newer homes is the size of the windows. Our current house has a beautiful 14-foot window in the master. Fabulous, until you try to buy curtains. The three quotes I got for wide, but basic, blackout curtains ranged from $2,700 to $3,500. Unwilling to spend on curtains what could get me a nice family holiday, we’ve been watching the sun peek between the 6 curtain panels we put up for the past five years. That is, until now.
The problem with off-the-shelf curtains is they’re all about 45″ wide and come in limited fabric options that seem to be the same year after year. So what’s wide, has a million pattern options, keeps up with current color trends and is a fraction of the cost of lined curtains? Drum roll … duvet covers.
No, I’m not kidding. Wayfair has almost 700 cotton blend duvets in full/queen. You can also find a lot on Overstock. They are naturally 2-sided so they look good from the outside too, are already hemmed and they’re twice as wide as curtain panels. A full/queen size duvet cover is about 90′ by 90′, perfect to cover your larger windows. Wait there’s more… these curtains are no sew and include blackout lining (or blackout stuffing as the case may be).
Here’s what you’ll need.
Why queen size? Because it best matches the store bought blackout liners. You could also buy blackout fabric and make a custom sized liner to fit any duvet. There’s no need to get fancy with hems or anything since they go inside the duvet curtain so it would be an easy project. Don’t sew? You could connect the 54″ fabric panels with iron on hem tape too. Liner is only about $7 a yard at Joanne’s and you need 5 yards per curtain.
Slip onto a curtain rod and you’re done! The lined curtains are nice and thick and drape beautifully.
Total spent about $450 ($140 less if you make your own liner) and now our room is nice and dark (important to reduce cancer risk) so you can sleep. You can coordinate your bedding by using matching shams as shown above. You could order the matching cover for your bed too but that just might be a bit much. Wow, with all these savings I’m feeling the need to add to my stash.